Movie review: Faster’ never lets up

Wednesday

Nov 24, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 24, 2010 at 11:18 AM

A guy is released from prison after a 10-year stretch. No doubt he’s been working out in the gym. I mean, look at those biceps and that neck! He runs – literally runs! – down the road to a junkyard, where a mint-condition, black-and-white Chevelle SS is waiting for him under a tarp, a big handgun tucked under the seat.

Ed Symkus

A guy is released from prison after a 10-year stretch. No doubt he’s been working out in the gym. I mean, look at those biceps and that neck! He runs – literally runs! – down the road to a junkyard, where a mint-condition, black-and-white Chevelle SS is waiting for him under a tarp, a big handgun tucked under the seat. He speeds off down the road, parks, doesn’t bother to look either way as he walks purposely across a busy street, enters a small office building, approaches a worker, raises the gun emotionlessly, and puts a bullet through the guy’s forehead.

And that’s only in the first five minutes. From there it picks up in intensity, and never stops.

It turns out to be a story of revenge, about a man referred to only as Driver (Dwayne Johnson), who’s been stewing in the hoosegow all these years over a bank job gone wrong and the resulting death of his brother and, naturally, what he’s gonna do to those responsible when he gets out.

There’s a list, you see, and he intends to blow away everyone on it, then check off their names like he’s playing out some kind of deranged version of “My Name Is Earl.” But look out! He’s not at all careful about his comings and goings and shootings. So it’s no surprise that suddenly there’s a cop on his trail, known only as Cop (Billy Bob Thornton), a heroin-addled, even-keeled, slow-talking fellow who’s – you guessed it – two weeks from retirement. He’s put on the case to assist spitfire Detective Cicero (Carla Gugino), who talks her whole part in short spurts of tough dialogue.

Uh-oh, there’s more to the script written by Tony and Joe Gayton. A mystery phone call is made to a slick young hit-man named Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who never asks questions when he gets an assignment. He just does what he’s told. In this case, in between loving up his hot, gun-crazed, marriage-minded girlfriend (Maggie Grace) and convincing himself that he’s “beaten yoga” and now wants to move onto something “more ultimate,” the call is complemented by a photo of Driver, his next victim.

The Killer character isn’t really needed in the story, but Jackson-Cohen gives such a strong performance that you understand why director George Tillman Jr. keeps him around.

What makes the film tick is Driver just doing what he believes he’s gotta do, and Cop trying his best to do his job, be a good dad to his underachieving son, and maybe even win back his ex-wife, while dealing with that pesky addiction.

Other father-son relationships make their way into the script, while loud guns keep blasting away, revving cars are even louder than the guns, and characters show off tattoos, scars and scowls.

Moving along relentlessly, the proceedings turn into a fast-paced game of cat and mouse, but it keeps getting harder to figure out who is which animal. Oddly, when you’ve already accepted that it’s simply going to be an action film, some flashbacks smoothly make their way into the script that show where some of the characters have come from and why they’re behaving the way they do.

It ends up being a film that consists of equal parts grittiness, melodrama and unexpected plot turns. Alas, it all goes a little too haywire just before the end, but it’s a movie that’s going to be appreciated as much for its acting as for its action.